


Leap of Faith

by Rhysbees



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: Dance school AU, Inconsistent writing style, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Sadie and Ivo are unlikely friends, alcohol use, bastardisation of Kierkegaard and Camus, charas are a little OOC, female oc - Freeform, i went for a walk in the woods and, impromptu dance off, is this how the Romantics felt??, little a ACAB, mangled talk of philosophy, no betas we die like men, no drafting just ZOOM, not at all suspicious house features, odd imagery, the whole fic came to me in a RUSH, unrealistic college parties, unrealistic reactions to drugs, wlw mlm solidarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23319970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhysbees/pseuds/Rhysbees
Summary: Robotnik and Stone meet at a party while going to school for dance.An odd oneshot for a friend.
Relationships: Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Leap of Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cookingwithcyanide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookingwithcyanide/gifts).



Aban had only been at his new university for a week when Sadie took him to his first party. 

“Come  on  you can’t sit by yourself watching netflix forever!” 

Aban shook his head.

“I’m  not by myself!”

“Okay, your cats do not count! Come on, just tonight. And if you don’t like it, I’ll never bug you about it again.” 

Aban sighed, rubbing the back of his neck with his arm. 

“Fine Sadie. But just tonight! And you can’t leave me alone! I don’t feel comfortable around people that I don’t know, and I’m afraid it’ll be weird since everyone knows each other and I just transferred here and ...” 

He trailed off, sighing again. 

“I’m. I’m just, ya know, I’m just a bit scared.” 

Sadie smiled at him. 

“Come  on  Aban. It’ll be fine. I’ll stay with you the whole time. Have a little faith in me okay? I wouldn’t take you somewhere unsafe!” 

“O-okay. Yeah. I’ll come tonight.”

“Great!”

-

The place that Sadie took him to was a run down house near the dance building. 

“This is Ivo’s place! He’s a GA, but he’s cool. He doesn’t give a shit what we do as long as we don’t bother him and we give him free shit basically. And he won’t rat us out. He fucking hates cops.”

Sadie laughed. Aban felt himself relax a bit. 

“Who is Ivo?”

“Oh! He’s a dance major here for like. I don’t know. His fifth doctorate? This is a new discipline for him though. I think he’s a scientist? I really didn’t know what drew him to dance until I saw him perform, honestly. But he’s a  damn natural at it. You probably won’t see him dance tonight though. He’s usually just in the back sulking and partaking in our ‘tributes’. You’re ballet right? Make sure you go to combined studio. It’ll blow your nuts off!” 

“Sadie. I don’t have nuts.”

“Irrelevant! I don’t have nuts and he blew them off!”

She clapped.

“Oh look we’re here!” 

Sadie hopped up the rickety steps to the building’s front door and confidently knocked out the rhythm of the first nine notes of  Für Elise . There was a shuffling noise on the other side of the door before a tall man in a black and red bathrobe jerked it open. 

“Hi Ivo!”

The man grunted, sticking out his hand. 

“Oh yeah! All business as usual.” 

She rolled her eyes, and passed something to Ivo. The exchange happened too quickly for Aban to really see what it was. 

“Who’s the... friend?” 

“Oh this is Aban! He transferred here to study ballet! He’s here from-“ 

“Okay, yeah, that’s enough. I don’t actually care. Get in before everyone in the neighborhood hears you.” 

“Yes sir!”

“ Doctor.”

“Yes, Doctor!” 

The ground floor of the house was slightly hazy and smelled heavily of disinfectant. From the ground floor, Aban could feel the vibration of a heavy bass under his feet. However, he could hardly hear any music at all. He looked at Sadie curiously. 

“Oh! You’re wondering about the music, right?”

Aban nodded.

“There’s a MAD sound proofing system in the basement. Ivo made it himself. Says it keeps cops from getting suspicious. He showed it to me once. It’s super cool! I stood upstairs and he yelled as loud as he could, and I couldn’t hear him at all! It’s really really nice for us autistic people too! So if you get overwhelmed just text me and we can come up here for a bit and chill out. I told you, this place is  cool .” 

Aban nodded uneasily. 

Sadie looked at him. 

“Are you okay? We can go home if you need to. I won’t be upset. There will be way more parties this year for me to go to. We can go home and watch Met Opera on demand if you want to...”

“No, I’m okay. I got this. Just. Give me a second to prepare for the noise level.” 

“Take as long as you need!” 

The basement was just as loud and chaotic as any other party Aban had been to. He felt the equivalent of his mental battery percentage already dropping. His hand gripped Sadie’s like a vice as they descended the steps. The slight haze in the air grew much thicker as they exited the staircase and stepped into what seemed to be an impromptu dance club. At the front of the room was DJ that Aban thought he recognised from his World Music Gen Ed. He wasn’t quite sure though. He at least had the same hair and glasses as the guy in his class. It was hard to see any definite features through the smoke that permeated the room. The miasma seemed to be a fragrant mix of weed, scented vape mist, incense, and smoke machine fog that somehow teetered with one foot in both the odious and the aromatic. Stone resisted the urge to cough and headed for the drinks.

Sadie slid across from him and pointed out different things, signing since the music drowned out any attempt at shouting across the table. 

“They have the staples here, see? Cheap beer and jungle juice. Oh hey, Only drink this if you want to get FUCKED UP very quickly. If you go and talk to Ivo, he can mix something in front of you too. He knows some people get reaally uncomfy not knowing exact mixes, and don’t tell him I said this, but he really loves mixing drinks. That pile over there has indicators Ivo made. They tell you if your drink is drugged. If you rinse it with water after, you can reuse it too. Grab two please? Thanks. Anyway! Yeah that’s the drinks. If you ask around there’s a lot more uh. Stuff available too. Everyone here’s really chill don’t worry. Hey pass me something. Surprise me. I have faith in your taste.”

Stone nodded and passed Sadie a bottle before taking one of the same drink for himself. It was some sort of fruity wine mixer. He opened it and took a sip. 

Peach. 

He and Sadie broke off from where the crowd was thickest and headed for the seating which had been set up towards the edges of the room. When Aban came along to paries, the two tended to stay on the outskirts. They chatted for a while, but after their bottles were empty, Aban couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. He knew that Sadie has said it was okay, but watching her, he knew she belonged in the thick of it. She was incredibly extroverted and she loved to dance. She belonged in the middle of the dance floor as much as ants belonged in colonies. 

He tapped her on the shoulder and she quickly looked at him before beginning to sign. 

“Do you need to leave, Aban?”

He shook his head and rapidly signed back. 

“No, Sadie. Opposite actually. I think I’m okay here. Go dance. I’ll text you when if I need you to come back. Plus, I can go upstairs if it gets bad.”

“You sure Aban? I feel a little uncomfortable leaving you alone.”

“Yeah. I’m sure. I’ll hit our panic button if something is really wrong, and I have my taser. I’m good.” 

“Okay. Have fun!” 

As Sadie disappeared into the haze, Aban wondered if he had made a huge mistake. What he did know for sure though, was that without Sadie’s protection, he was  way to close to the dance floor. Getting up, he made his way closer to the walls of the room. He searched for a corner as he enjoyed the comfort the presence of the two walls brought him. Nothing could come up behind him without him knowing. As he got closer to the corner however, a silhouette came into view. He cursed quietly and started to head in another direction when he saw a hand wave him over to the corner. 

He debated quickly leaving, but Sadie’s voice echoed loudly in his mind. 

“Take a leap of faith!”

He grit his teeth, put a hand on his panic button, and headed over. 

As he approached, the sharp features and distinctive moustache of “Doctor Ivo” came into focus. The doctor seemed to be smoking something, and he held it out to Aban. 

Aban shook his head. The doctor shrugged. 

“So. Are you a friend of Sadie’s?” 

The doctor snorted, releasing a cloud which quickly merged with the preexisting miasma in the room. 

“Despite her rather asinine philosophical beliefs, yes I could say that she is fairly tolerable.” 

“Asinine philosophical beliefs?” 

“She’s much too. Optimistic. She thinks that we all need to  trust  and  have faith  and that somehow that will make all of the utterly horrid things that happen in our lives all right.”

Aban nodded slowly. Sadie was pretty optimistic. 

“And. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a load of hot bullshit honestly. I think that Sadie is a hypocrite. She goes on and on about never accepting unjust systems and about changing the world, but yet she is just content to give up philosophically? It makes no goddamn sense!”

Ivo waved his hands rapidly as he spoke, pausing occasionally to take a rather angry hit of whatever he was smoking. Aban began to feel as if he had opened a Pandora’s box of philosophy that he did not fully understand, but he also had a feeling that stopping the doctor’s rant was impossible. 

“She says we need to stop trying to categorise absolutely everything and just get to doing and trust that what we’re doing is right, but how do we know what we’re doing if we don’t know exactly what we are working with? How are we to make an educated decision on whether to live or die if we have incomplete data on either side? How are you to find the meaning of life? We need data! We need to capture it; we need to vivisect it! To take it apart and find out how it ticks so that we can most effectively wage war! But it doesn’t exist! That data does not exist! There is nothing to vivisect. There is no great meaning of life. There is only what is in front of us. What’s in our nose, on our  tongues , under our  fingers .” 

Aban had no idea what most of what the doctor was saying meant, and he wasn’t sure whether that was because it was too weighty of a subject or simply because the man wasn’t making sense at all. However, his way of speaking was undeniably entrancing. As he spoke, he moved as if conducting an unseen orchestra or performing a private dance. His body moved both jerkily and gracefully - riding the line between mechanical and organic, each movement purposeful and energised. Aban could almost imagine what he looked like truly dancing. 

As he looked on, the doctor swayed in place as a particularly energised gesticulation threw him off balance. Aban lunged forward, catching the doctor and rebalancing him. The doctor started to shove him off, but unexpectedly relaxed completely, causing Aban, in his surprise, to fall to the floor with the doctor sprawled on top of him. He considered hitting his panic button, but the doctor didn’t make any moves toward him, but rather continued his rant as if nothing at all was different. 

“ Sadie is content to find meaning in what she sees as our embryonic state. That is, that this life is merely our development and adolescence - where we scream and cry and make mistakes. But that what we will become will be completely unrecognisable. Sadie says we are pupae in cocoons. Our organs are  melting , our brains are  liquifying , and we are being remade and rent from our most intimate interior to our outermost exterior. We are suffering we are  dying.  But like  nature  has a blueprint for the pupae, some other power has a blueprint for  us.  The caterpillar worries not whether it lives or dies. It does not ask how much it will suffer. It simply.  Makes .  The .  Cocoon .” 

The doctor shifted in Aban’s lap and leaned in as he drove his point home. 

“But we... what was your name again?”

“Aban Stone.”

“Right. But we, Stone, are not butterflies. We do not metamorphose. Life is not our cocoon. There is  nothing for us after death. And even if there were, it is foolish for us to disregard life here. We  exist  Stone. We exist in all of our weeping and bleeding. We exist with or without some  higher power.  Stone, I refuse to place my trust in something that’s never done anything for me. I place my trust in the here. The now. The concrete reality of what’s in, on, and around us. I place my trust in  me.  I find my meaning in  myself.  I strive for perfection for  my  sake. I improve the world around me for  my  sake. I exist for  my  sake. I  make  the world into something enjoyable for  me  in the  here and now. ”

As the doctor completed that section of his rant, Aban watched as the man realised that when he had fallen, he had crushed whatever he had been smoking beyond rescue. Aban observed that he seemed rather like a pissed off cat that had found that its owner was occupying its favourite spot. The doctor rummaged around in his bathrobe, withdrawing another blunt which he quickly lit. Aban hazarded a response. 

“You don’t... seem to be enjoying yourself.” 

The doctor growled low. 

“No thanks to you and your idiotic need to  touch me.” 

Aban frowned. 

“Fine. Well get off me then.” 

The doctor clenched his hand tight around his lighter. Aban’s hand slipped from the panic button to the taser. The doctor’s eyes followed the movement, spotting the item. His grip loosened. He took a long pull from the blunt. He exhaled deeply. 

“My...  apologies Stone.” 

Aban relaxed a bit. 

The doctor was still on his lap. 

“What are you smoking?”

“A personal blend of cannabis and mescaline.”

“I didn’t peg you as the type for psychedelics.” 

“There was a man. A scientist. Pollan. Michael Pollan. Doubt you’ve heard of him. He did research on psychedelics, you know. Didn’t fuck around with finding the meaning of life. Tried not to allow spirituality to taint his research. Studied the drugs; Took the drugs. He published books. We’re not all hippies.” 

“O-kay.” 

“Stone. You study dance right?”

“Ballet, yes.” 

“Dance with me.” 

“I dont. I’m not really. I-“

“That wasn’t a question, Stone.” 

Ivo flagrantly disregarded the hand that Stone still had resting on his taser, and took Stone’s other hand, pulling him to the center of the room where the dance floor was still set up. Stone almost tased the man, but resisted when he saw Sadie give him a ‘thumbs up’ from nearby. It seemed that she had been keeping an eye on them. He was grateful for that. 

He allowed himself to be led onto the dance floor and pulled into some sort of odd step that seemed to be of the doctor’s own making. It took all of his training to keep up at first, but he quickly fell into his rhythm. He allowed himself to relax into the doctor’s arms as the other man led them around the dance floor which had significantly thinned out. The smoke, Aban noticed, was also thinner and the noise level lower. How long had the doctor talked for? As they spun, he felt himself being pulled in closer to the other man, and he smelled the scent of burnt plant matter and coffee on his robe. He looked up and found himself eye to eye with the doctor. Aban fortunately had never had issues with eye contact - though Sadie did - and he felt no reason to look away. The doctor’s gaze was both sharp and glassy - his thoughts clearly seen swirling behind his piercing but unfocused glare. He seemed miffed by the audacity of someone else to look him in the eyes. Like an equal. Aban held his gaze. He had read that some animals used eye contact to establish dominance, and just as the doctor had reminded him of a cat before, he was once again reminded of the animal. He didn’t back down, but held his ground even as the doctor’s dance grew more erratic and complex. Aban didn’t dare look down at his feet. He knew that it was a ploy to get him to look away. He allowed the music to seep into his body - to consume his thoughts. He glared into the doctor’s eyes as if hoping to tear his thoughts out so that he could fully understand them. His feet and body moved freely - decades of training allowing muscle memory to take over. As they continued to dance, he felt like another sort of animal. As much as it was still a battle for dominance, he found in the doctor a sense of an ornithological mating ritual. They twisted and jumped; pulled away from each other and careened into each other with a frightening passion. There was no more basement. No more party. No more hazy room. There was just the here and now. There was just what was in front of them. There was only the other. Stone looked at Ivo and took a leap of faith. 

He reached out, grabbing both of Ivo’s hands with his own, pulling him in. The doctor, not wanting to lose the upper hand, pulled Aban into a dip. Stone released the doctor, and quickly shot out a hand, grabbing the back of Ivo’s head, causing the other man to whine as his hair was tugged and he was pulled into a kiss. 

Ivo growled, and the battle began anew. 

Sadie and another girl, the only ones left, quietly slipped upstairs together - Sadie sending Aban a text to ‘please let her know if he needed her.’ 

Five minutes later she smiled as she received a response saying that it was fine for her and her new girlfriend to go home.

**Author's Note:**

> don’t do drugs kids
> 
> 5 minute painting is titled: tfw u go to a party and this random stoned guy in a bathrobe sits on you and goes OFF about philosophy for literally hours
> 
> I had to listen to a piece of music for class called Mescaline Mix by Terry Riley and wow it gave me the heebie jeebies and I forgot it existed until today
> 
> GA = graduate assistant


End file.
